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00:00You produced some of the most famous movies in American history . First we failed in order to figure stuff out. You're gonna make a mess. You decide to leave. You know I've certainly been successful. But none of this is mine. How did you gravitate towards the internet. I saw screens being used for something else. They were it was interactive and intrigue. Is that how it happened. I know it sounds quite crackers but that is what happens when people would said Barry Diller who has been a big ass. They said I was. Then they said I was great. Would you fix your tie please. People wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed but it just seemed to sway. All right. I don't consider myself a journalist and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though I have a day job running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick so Barry you have had a very unusual career. Let me try to explain this. Many people wish somebody would. OK so many people have built media companies and then sometimes they've run them and a few other people have built Internet companies and sometimes they run them. What was it about your abilities you think to be able to do both. I think probably it's probably like a couple of things. I mean one is curiosity. I probably am more curious than those people who've been on one side or the other. I'm ah let me say I'm sloppily furious on the and the other thing is it's about editorship. I mean I think that certainly in media businesses which is where you are choosing from I'll do this or I won't do that. True editorship you did very well on television very well in movies. How did you gravitate towards the internet. Well it started because I first of all I don't really like repeating myself. I've been in the movie and television business for 20 years kind of running multiple like movie and television operations. And when I left . First of all my biggest issue was I didn't want to work for anyone anymore because I've been a corporatist. I've always worked for a company and I got to a point where I was 49 when I said I really you either kind of are or you're not. And I want to be not having any one so to speak. Thumb on my neck also. I wanted to see if I could create something that was really my own . Another way of saying this release the way I would maybe say it maybe I had the same view myself as they could do this why can't I do that. You didn't have that you know I mean because I really I never really. I've always kind of acted out of more insecurity than security. And I probably didn't think that the people I mean I thought a lot of the people I worked for were idiots. But in the main I certainly didn't think that in fact oh I could do that. The question for me was could I do that . Let's go back through how your career unfolded before we go to what you're doing today. So you grew up in Beverly Hills and you went to college initially at UCLA. You know it it's a bit of a fake out and I've never absolutely clarified it. I mean it's it that I went to UCLA for about three weeks three weeks. What did your parents say when you dropped out . Nothing more than they said before and after it or during my parents were the most laissez faire of parents and they did not really have a point of view other than they probably assumed that they just support me for the rest of my life. So we are parents wealthy fairly. Yeah. So what did you do. Hibernating for a while. I knew where my interest was pulling. My interest is pulling me into entertainment. I've always been fascinated by it. I was obviously a lot around me. My parents my best friends and their parents were mostly in various forms of the entertainment business. So it was it was the allure. But I had no clue how to get there. I mean there no starting jobs. So I called my best friend's father Danny Thomas who was a famous comedian of the time television star and I so I started William Morris in the mailroom. What do you actually do in the mailroom because I never could figure out how you can be in the mail room and then you wind up being a CEO. I didn't do what most people do in the mailroom. What most people do in the mailroom is they really they they want to make contacts. They want to network with people they want to meet people and through that networking if they impress people they'll probably get a job or usually people in the mailroom wanted to be agents. The last thing in the world I ever wanted to do was be an agent. I read the file room of William Morris for almost three years and essentially the history of the entertainment business from ADP and that was that was my schooling and then how do you break out of the mailroom to get into a real job. So what happened . Serendipity most of my career is some cross between serendipity and curiosity anyway. I had met a mid-level executive at ABC named Leonard Goldberg. He was a New York executive moving to Los Angeles to become the vice president of current programming a kind of like very middle level job. But I thought he was really smart and I I didn't really have some yen for television particularly but you know I was Sparky I was interested. I knew I couldn't stay at William Morris any longer. So he asked me to be his assistant. I said yes. The day that I left William Morris and was going to start at ABC they fired the czar of ABC programming and they reached down and they picked my guy Leonard Goldberg to be head of programming. So I went from this little tiny thing to moving to New York to becoming the assistant to the head of programming at ABC. And within six months I was kind of running the program apart. You're on your way and eventually you became the president of ABC Television. SEC right. Well the entertainment part entertainment part and you invented something that was novel at the Times called the movie of the week ABC presents the movie of the week. We had the idea of saying well rather than buying mostly bad movies and putting on continually television series that tend to fail. Why don't we see if we could make a movie every week. And we chose this 90 minute form rather than two hours. And so we we it was very ambitious because it hadn't been done before and everybody thought they would fail because that was not the diet of television at the time. And as most things you know what everybody thinks is going to fail. It worked. It worked. So you're doing very well and you're in your mid thirties. If that no I'm 30 I was just 32 I'm 32. But you're pretending you're 33 or something or 34 is you're you know you want exaggerate how will you because you're so young right now. I love being young . I hate being now. You know the idea is I'm now I've gone from the youngest person in the room to the oldest person and I know this for not a bad transition leave me I know it yeah. No no no . Anyway I was 32. Right. So you're 32 years old and you're getting a lot of attention. So then I guess somebody called you up and said Would you like to run Paramount Pictures. Is that how it happened. Charlie Blue Dawn. I've gotten to know very early. Like when I was like a year or two at ABC he had just bought Paramount at the time Paramount had been failing which is why he and how he bought it. And he wanted to sell these movies to television old movies from Paramount library all of which were terrible. And I gave him a very hard time. He liked that we got began a relationship. And some years later he kept off wanting me to come to Paramount. I didn't want to go. I really didn't want to leave ABC particularly. But finally he said All right I'm going to make you Chairman and Chief Executive of Paramount. I said Charlie I have no experience in the movie business. Yes we've made seventy five movies for television but you really want to make me chief executive. He said yes. And I said actually kind of reluctantly. I went to Leonard golden son the founder of FTSE and I told him I said I told him about this . And he said well you have to go. And I said Really. And it's true. I know it sounds quite crackers but that is what happened . And then you decide to leave. I got to the point forty nine and I said you know I've certainly been successful. But none of this is mine. And I went to Rupert and I said I want to be a principal now when you're running Paramount you produced some of the most famous movies in American history. First we failed because I actually believe that in order to figure stuff out you're gonna make a mess. What what did you make a mess of. We made a series of awful movies but I was learning the movie business . We were in last place and I was kind of on fumes at that time and saying to Charlie you know maybe this is hasn't worked out . But we were in that two years we were playing really good development tracks for the future. So when it turned which it did in the third year of paramount when we went literally from six to first place it was a big big dramatic turn. Some of the ones that I remember were very big hits Raiders of the Lost Ark. And did you know that was going to be great from the beginning. Yeah it doesn't. It's rare that you really know from the beginning but when if you if you read do you remember seeing Raiders Of The Lost Ark. OK so you remember the opening scene when he goes to the tomb and then the big ball. I remember that name right. OK. That was about twelve pages of the script by the way. I finished that twelve takes the script saying if we can shoot this this is going to be fantastic. Of course it will cost more than any movie ever taken because of whatever whatever. But that script rarely. I mean it's happened 10 times. Maybe when you finished that script you said smash but you also did television production and as I remember you had cheers. Was that one of yours. Cheers and happy days. Happy Days Laverne and Shirley . You're doing great job. People are telling your great. And then all of a sudden you left paramount to run 20th Century Fox . Yes and Rupert Murdoch came in and at the same time I'd always been interested in the idea of a fourth network. And so again serendipitously John Kluger owned a group of television stations called Metro Media. Right. And he was passing through Los Angeles and I said to Rupert why don't we buy his television stations and start a fourth network. And Rupert the greatest player gambler but on strong instinct with nothing to back it up . But thinking this was a good idea said yes I said yes. I said they're going to cost a billion two hundred million dollars. He said that's OK. And not more than an hour later we shook hands with John Clooney on buying his television stations. So you don't have that you're building the fourth network. Yeah and you did. And people thought you were crazy. Yes but you did it the best position is for people to think you're crazy. So that's great. Good luck . And then you decide to leave. Yes. Well I. I got to the point forty nine and I said you know I've certainly been successful. But none of this is mine. And I mean and nothing is ever yours. But it wasn't. It was. And I went to Rupert and I said I want to be a principal and Rupert could be the greatest good surface. He said there's only one principal in this company. So very nice that you want to be. But that's reality. And I went away thinking oh my God what a terrible thing. What a terrible harsh thing to be told . Now I have to actually either decide that I'm going to act on it or not. So I left. You've been successful at everything you've touched. Now you'd have to start your own business. You don't know what I've been unsuccessful at each step of the way. It started off very um but in the end each one worked out they worked out. So you decide you're gonna change your life become a principal. But the problem is you don't know what you want to be a principal of the things that people wanted me to do. Of course was to run a movie company. Take a job. Chief executive job in this part of the entertainer and that part of you and all of that stuff. I had really no interest in. So you started to buy some things. My wife had gone to a place called QVC. Your wife is Diane von Furstenberg and she's a designer and she went to QVC on that because they wanted her to sell clothes on QVC . And she said you have to go and see what this thing is. It's the most amazing thing. So I go there. West Chester Pennsylvania and I see a you know 10 foot square 100 foot square stage. The use of computers and television sets and telephones and me who only knew about screens being used for narrative I saw screens being used for something else. They were it was interactive. It was a computer screen that when they offered a product you would see the calls would be on this computer screen seeing them rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall and the whole thing was this very early kind of convergence. And again my only thing about screens was storytelling. And here was another use of a screen. And it intrigued me. And then again serendipity I'm having lunch with Ralph friend Brian Roberts who long Comcast and Comcast which owned and they wanted me to do a production company and I was so bored with this lunch I thought When is it going to be over I can go home and read as you do in those kinds of situations. I I I didn't want them to talk anymore about trying to lure me into this thing. So I said to Ralph Roberts tell me your story . He tells me the story and in the story he's telling me how we started this thing called QVC. I said stop. Tell me more about QVC. He starts telling me more about QVC. I'm drawing him out drawing him out and . And I said to him what's going to what are you going to do with QVC so will the founder is going to retire. I said Oh really . I said is he. What does he couldn't do. He said well he's going to sell this. I said Could I buy his interest Ralph said yes. I walked out of the Four Seasons Hotel knowing what I was going to do. I went to QVC took an interest in it and that was three years getting this is primitive convergence of these computers and telephones and that was three years before the Internet really started for normal flight. So it was luck and circumstance and at that point people would said Barry Diller who has been a big yes. They said I was. Then they said I was crazy. And he's the low rent I was sure I was crazy low rent QVC. I was what is he. Where's he going and what drives . Chester Pennsylvania. We will never hear about them again. So QVC you had a stake in it ultimately you grew it. You started buying Internet related companies things that sold things over the Internet like Ticketmaster or things like that. And you put him into a company called IAC. Did you know at the time each of these would probably work. Oh no. Of course he did. So either way many of them didn't. But the most successful of them is at Expedia. There's not the biggest Edi is probably the biggest . But you know they they they range from Live Nation Ticketmaster Match dot com. So you own this company. And it's now become a very big public company. Yes. Roughly 250 million dollars is put into by the companies initial that you started with and today that's worth 57 billion dollars more or less. Yeah so that's pretty good as I think I've mentioned your stock is up 80 percent this year. So how are you gonna top all that in the business world. I can't do much better than we've done. Find something else to fail at first prompted you to say well if I did this maybe I could do something else. They came and said that they were going to tear down appearance was falling apart . And what I'd be interested in building a new pier and I said what you're planning to do is boring but I could be ambitious about it about maybe building an actual island in the park. If you're up for that I'm up for it . Today the Internet is still very much part of our lives. What about television and and motion picture do you think they'll continue to be important parts of our lives. I think the movie business is over as a really cultural institution of any great value because the movie business is now about primarily it's about making sequels and big huge mega movies that are more marketing things than anything else. So I think movies have very much receded. I think television is of course as we all know it's having a great period because of the incredible optionality in television and the craft. Are you worried that four or five technology companies could control our culture and our lives so much. You're not worried about that . No I am worried about that. I've always thought concentration too much concentration is bad and that goes against the consolidating principles which are forcing consolidation everywhere and we'll continue to. And I think that's not a good thing. But you expect the movie companies and television coming will only be bought by these big technology companies. Not so sure they'll buy them. I think they'll actually supersede them . I mean the thing is that that the two companies that are that are really dominating right now are Netflix grown totally outside of the infrastructure of the entertainment business and Amazon and which whose business model is absolutely antithetical in a way to what the business model of entertainment has been which is you put on a show and people like it and the audience comes and they pay you. Their business model is to sell subscriptions to prime. And just as a subsidiary they give you good stuff on the side. It's worked out pretty well. Yeah. You've spent a lot of time on philanthropy recently. Are you committed to the Giving Pledge that Warren Buffett and Bill Gates develop and you're one of the original signers of it. And one of your philanthropists in New York is something called Highline. What the Highline was was an elevated railroad track that hadn't been used for probably 50 years. So what we did. It took 10 years. We created this elevated park. We thought the first year we'd have three hundred and fifty I think it was 250000 people. Three million came the first year and last year 7 million. So it's been this . It's been very exciting thing. So that prompted you to say well if I did this maybe I could do something else even stupider . It happened this way. They came and said that they were going to tear down a pyrex was falling apart. And what I'd be interested in building a new pier. And I said Well not if it's a pier. What you're planning to do is boring but if I could be ambitious about it about maybe building an actual island in the park that's not shaped like a pier. If you go up if you're up for that I'm up for it. And of course we started with you know kind of a narrower vision. And like all crazy projects it's all right. Boom. And people can go there and yes it's. The idea is that you know there's I love public art. The idea of making a public space I think is great. So it is a park for people . It's also performance center. Do we pull it off. It's almost like walking on the. You get to it by two bridges and walking through the bridge you leave this city of concrete and mostly concrete and stir and all that stuff and you'll go to Ise. And what's it going to be called for fifty five. Not Diller part . No you don't want that. No. So today if you were starting your career all over again. Yeah. What would you go and what area would you go into. I have no idea. I mean I think I've never really had a goal. I've never. I mean I've never said I want to be that. So to me it was whatever I was curious about. Now one of the things I like to ask people about his leadership. What do you think the skills are that you had as a leader. Probably kind of often blind willfulness I think will add some energy to propel it. But the stronger the will I think the more I think that at least allows people to follow. If you were to say today what you most proud of what you have achieved with your life what would you say. Probably probably my marriage. Hey so you got married in two thousand and one one and two a very famous fashion designer. Did she give you fashion advice and dressing you or not really. Take a look. No. Well I don't know. Do you give her advice on Internet Jihye Lee the thing also I mean her instincts transcend fashion and so anything that comes up her instincts are pretty damn good. And so I listen and she occasionally listens to me. OK so you have a very happy life . I'm so lucky. Well say thank you. That's what I do all the time. Congratulations for what you've achieved. And thank you very much for your time. Pleasure .

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The David Rubenstein Show: Barry Diller

David Rubenstein sits down with Barry Diller, the billionaire chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp, for a conversation about Diller's first job in the mail room at William Morris, his years as one of the most successful movie and television executives and his decision at age 49 to walk away from it all to start his own company, which is now valued at $57 billion, including companies that have been spun off. The interview was taped at Bloomberg Headquarters in New York City on Sept. 27. (Corrects to clarify valuation in description.) (Source: Bloomberg)

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